The Separation of Blackness and State

By Chidike Okeem

Unquestionably, most Democrats have a gift for effective political speech. Only liberal Democrats are capable of making their ruinous policies sound like genius ideas created by majestic celestial beings. The Democrats' one-of-a-kind ability to attractively present their poisonous policies is outrageously underrated by Republicans, who have done very little to improve their own ability to package and present their clearly superior political product.

As a consequence of gross Republican inarticulateness, the Democrats have triumphed in the battle of making membership in their party an integral part of black identity, so much so that blackness in America no longer has much to do with skin color, culture, or even the unique African-American experience of historical discrimination. Being black in America today has turned into a political status that can be blithely bestowed on a person like Bill Clinton, despite his whiteness and racist ties, and can be nonchalantly revoked from someone like Allen West, who is black in the truest American context. Manifestly, in order to maintain black validity in American society today, being a card-carrying member of the Democratic Party is a fixed obligation.

This insidious combination of racial identity and politics is perhaps one of the Democrats' most potent structural tools to ensure the black community's perpetual allegiance to their cause. Liberals pleadingly call for an egalitarian society where there is a separation of church and state, whereas they themselves have hypocritically created a repressive system where blackness and state have no observable dividing line.

Due to the fact that faithfulness to the Democratic Party has been so intermingled with black racial identity, destroying the Democrats' satanic stranglehold on the black vote must involve more than simply pushing the Republican agenda. There first must be an intellectual annihilation of the nonsensical notion that racial and political identity should be indistinguishable. When this lethal link is broken, people will no longer see the terms "black" and "Republican" as oxymoronic.

In 1998, the Nobel Prize-winning writer Toni Morrison gave Bill Clinton the preposterous sobriquet of "America's first black president" because, according to her, he "display[ed] almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald's-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas."

Clearly, she forgot one descriptor. Bill Clinton was also a Democrat.

No white Republican today could ever be endearingly called black -- even if he or she grew up in Harlem to two adoptive black parents, could rap like Jay-Z, dance like Michael Jackson, or cook fried chicken better than Popeyes in Louisiana. Rather, being a card-carrying member of the Republican Party causes even real black people to have their racial authenticity disputed.

Remarkably, however, Bill Clinton was considered "The First Black President" for years before liberals finally got Obama -- a mixed-raced man whom they could pass off as black. This is the same Bill Clinton who interned for, and was mentored by, a noted segregationist, J. William Fulbright, during the 1960s -- a man to whom he later gave the prestigious Presidential Medal of Freedom during his tenure as POTUS in the 1990s.

Without question, only a white Democrat could get away with having such strong ties with odious segregationists while still wearing the amorously symbolic title of "The First Black President." Clearly, being a Democrat covers up a multitude of anti-black sins.

Even Barack Obama -- a mixed-race man whose black heritage is strikingly distant from black American heritage -- is considered to be both the realization and embodiment of Martin Luther King's dream, despite the fact that he was elected not because of the estimable content of his character; neither was he voted into office for any other reason than the color of his skin.

Clearly, if one were using an explicitly American historical template, it would be much more historically accurate to dispute the blackness of a half-white, half-Kenyan man than it would be to dismiss or dispute the blackness of an Allen West or a Herman Cain, whose ancestry would trace back to Western Africa and the Atlantic slave trade.

Of course, this historical analysis is neglected because (a) race is merely a political tool for the Democrats and (b) Republicans are too timid to talk about race, beyond their picayune squabbles against artificial foes like hyphenated Americanism and their championing of bizarre propositions like social colorblindness.

What is it that causes a black man like Herman Cain to have his blackness openly questioned by an illiterate grimalkin and white liberal like Janeane Garofalo?

What is it that causes a black man like Allen West to be disparaged by white liberals for calling himself the modern-day Harriet Tubman?

Why is it that "The First Black President" Bill Clinton gets a pass for likening Republican attempts to limit felons' voting as an attempt to return to Jim Crow?

Why is it that Al Gore gets a pass for suggesting that people who assert the basic fact that carbon dioxide does not drive world temperature are morally equal to Bull Connor?

Clearly, being a Democrat gives even liberals with substantial deficits in melanin the authority to professorially dictate what constitutes black validity and acceptability. Meanwhile, the result of being a Republican is an automatic revocation of the privilege to cite black history while making political points -- even when such a Republican is indisputably black. The only explanation for why white liberal Democrats have the unmitigated gall to brazenly question the blackness of black right-wingers is because blackness has been hijacked and politicized to the point where the terms "black" and "Democrat" are practically inseparable.

In order for the right to rectify this situation, this iniquitous Democratic plot must first be exposed, and, secondly, the right must create a more cohesive message on the issue of race to recapture the black vote they have, in essence, ceded. Sadly, however, different factions of the conservative movement have different messages, which is not an effective way to create a powerful and sonorous message.

For the separation of blackness and state to occur, Republicans must act as the agent of separation. This will entail the jettisoning of the timidity that has characterized the right-wing approach to the issue of race, as well as adopting a more robust form of argumentation in order to show how conservative policies are superior for the creation of wealth and opportunity in the black community.

Certainly, the Republican Party will never get every black vote, nor can the Republican Party be "all things to all people," as the saying goes. There are some people in any group who are lazy and do not want any part in a political platform that encourages hard work in exchange for wealth and opportunity. They will always sanguinely advocate for a socialist nanny state. Fortunately, however, those who are black are not the majority of black people, and there is precisely no reason for the vast majority of hardworking blacks to vote Democratic.

Republicans must snip the dangerous tie between blackness and state. With black unemployment higher than it has been for 27 years and a president who has been evidently mum on issues regarding black plight, I am optimistic about the prospects of race and politics being separated before Tuesday, November 6, 2012.